The price of scholarly information has been increasing at a rate of more than 11% a year for the past fifteen years, but funding for library acquisitions among major University research libraries has averaged less than 8% per year. At the same time, there have been new demands on collections budgets, reflecting fundamental changes in scholarship: the number of scholarly books and journals published has grown dramatically; information technology has created new kinds of digital information resources, which in turn require a new infrastructure; and research advances have created entirely new academic disciplines which require library support. At Berkeley, the inability to increase the acquisitions budget since 1990 has compromised The Library's historic commitment to develop comprehensive collections. Either the University and campus must develop a budget model to address the problem of funding comprehensive library collections, or The Library must define and implement new, more realistic collection goals and strategies.

UCOP funding nearly compensated for the impact of inflation and changing academic priorities at the Berkeley Library until 1989. In the early 1970's, The University of California's Office of the President reached an accord with the campuses and the state legislature to fund University Libraries through the "Voigt-Susskind" formula. The formula determined campus library collection budgets by analyzing the information needs of the academic programs on each campus, and increased the collections budget annually to cover costs, including inflation. Until the economic downturn of 1989, Berkeley's collections budget received increases similar to those at our peers; from 1980/81 through 1988/89 the collections budget increased almost 100%, from $3,400,000 to $6,800,00. In 1990, the University ceased funding inflationary increases in the cost of library materials, even though inflation continued at double-digit rates. Since the campus has not been able to make up the difference from its own resources, Berkeley's rate of acquisition has fallen from #1 nationally in 1981 to #10 in 1994, and from #1 in journal subscriptions in 1982 to #4 in 1994. We have fallen behind our peers in both absolute and relative terms: we have many more academic programs and students than the private research universities with which we compete for faculty, graduate students and grants.

Despite the unprecedented budgetary pressures on the Berkeley campus, the dollar amount of the Library's budget for information resources (i.e., the funds to purchase books, journals, and the purchase or licensing of digital information of all kinds, e.g., databases) has not been cut. Indeed the base budget has been raised fairly regularly from campus sources, and a temporary allocation has supplemented the base for the last two years. But the base budget, even augmented with temporary funds, has not kept pace with the growing cost of information. Since 1990 the Library real purchasing power of the collections budget has declined by 26.3 percent, so that Berkeley's base information resources budget now lags behind the budgets of peer institutions.

During 1993/94, the latest year for which comparison data are available, the collections budget for the entire Berkeley campus, including Affiliated Libraries, was $9,559,943 - fifth among ARL libraries, trailing Michigan ($10,664,110); Stanford ($11,066,524); Yale ($11,460,000); and Harvard ($14,378,067). [Note: Endowments tend to protect collection budgets from the full impact of inflation at private Universities, thus The Library has made the collection endowment its top priority in the campaign.]

Given current budget priorities and projected budget resources, it seems likely that the funding gap between Berkeley and its peers will continue to widen, and the purchasing power of the budget will continue its decline. To fully compensate for inflation - that is, to stay at the same level of collecting - would require adding $1 million each year to the base budget for information resources. The campus does not have discretionary resources of this magnitude, and The Vice Chancellor's initiative to discuss restoration of funding from UCOP will require several years - if it is successful at all. The current crisis, in short, requires us to create a new collections strategy for the Library, so that limited resources are spent as effectively as possible to meet the information needs of the campus. Even if resources if this magnitude were available, The Library would have to rethink its collections policies to adapt to structural changes in scholarly communication:

The growth of information worldwide means that comprehensive collections are not really possible; even a budget that does keep pace with inflation delivers an ever decreasing percentage of relevant information to campus faculty and students.

Changing patterns of scholarly inquiry, including emerging disciplines and multi-disciplinary research, create new literatures and draw on existing information resources in new ways. As a consequence, collections resources must be reallocated to support emerging fields.

Changing academic priorities and programs on campus, accelerated by more than 200 new faculty appointments in the wake of VERIP, require certain new kinds of scholarly information and, by extension, an end to the development of some traditional collections.

Digital technologies are making possible new forms of scholarly information and publishing, and create opportunities for libraries to make information accessible whether they own it or not.

Therefore, the Library must initiate a campus wide discussion to formulate a new strategy and budget model for delivery of library information to the campus.

STRATEGIC OPTIONS

Our planning assumption is that the dollar amount of the current collections budget will not increase substantially during the next five years. Projecting the historic 11% annual inflation rate into the future, in five years we will be able to buy less than half of what we buy today, just as today we are buying half of what we bought in 1985. Given this stark reality, how should the library allocate its collections and operations budgets?

Should the library continue to cut collections across the board, as has been the tactic during the past five years, or should excellence in a few priority areas be protected, by cutting selectively? Who will identify those priority areas? What level of library service is acceptable for non-priority academic programs?

Should the library greatly expand cooperative collection development programs with other institutions, particularly Stanford and UC? What kinds of delivery services will provide acceptable access for collections located elsewhere?

Can digital collections and networked access to information substitute for ownership of print collections in some fields? If so, how will a campus infrastructure to provide access digital collections be funded? What are the organizational implications of digital library collections for the relationship between the Library and IS&T? Between the campus and the UC system?

Historically, library services have been subsidized, and appear free to library users. Is this financial model viable in the future? If not: Which services should be subsidized, which should be fee-for-service? Which library users should pay, which should be subsidized?

In the absence of comprehensive collections and services, how might we fulfill our mission as research collection of last resort for other libraries in the state?

Up to now the Library has collected broadly and deeply, without undue concern for the unequal costs of different collections, or with unequal levels of use. How should the quality and priority of library collections be measured in the future?

These are fateful questions for the Library, yet the failure to sustain comprehensive collections will be irreversible. While we must proceed carefully, we must proceed soon: to balance the budget we must begin cutting collections by March 1, 1996. These are political questions in the best sense of the word, questions about the Library as a public good which is shared by the highly specialized research and teaching programs of the entire University: How should these questions be answered?